


Batman's Kid

by Ferith12



Series: To See Things Hidden [1]
Category: DCU
Genre: Abused!Flash, Batman would too, Flash is from the Justice League Cartoon, Gen, Robin knows all, if he were more of a people person, yes I went there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:38:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6264478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Watchtower was buzzing with what was quite possibly the craziest rumor of the leagues history: apparently, batman had a kid working with him.</p>
<p>... I don't even know.  Alternate Justice league?  They've been around for a while but no one knows Batman's identity.  I don't even know how that all worked in the show.  </p>
<p>Read Notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Batman's Kid

**Author's Note:**

> Dick is from that one AU of mine where I try to make it feasible that Bruce would A) adopt him, and B) let him fight crime. That AU is set in the Young Justice universe, though, and as far as I know Wally has a happy family. What you need to know is that Gotham's Juvie is earth's best attempt at hell and Dick spent a year there.
> 
> Wally's backstory is sort of based off that one girl that linguists and people like to talk about. She was locked up in an attic until the age of fourteen and during that time she had little (practically no) interaction with human beings. 
> 
> Wally was rescued at the age of ten and his neglect wasn't quite as extreme as hers. His dad was more abusive, but would occasionally talk or read to his son when he was high or something. Plus, Wally's a genius. So he ended up pretty normal and learned to talk and everything. The speedster thing helped, too. It gave him extra time to process inter-personal interaction stuff.
> 
> I think about this way too much. I mean, the very existence of Cass kind of proves that in this universe people can learn language for the first time after puberty. Although how much does body language count as a language? And she was being taught stuff, so her brain was being stimulated and she was interacting with a fellow human being. How much of a difference does that make? I shouldn't use notes to think about this stuff.

The Watchtower was buzzing with what was quite possibly the craziest rumor of the leagues history: apparently, batman had a kid working with him. The league was pretty much evenly divided between those who scoffed that the theory (but passed it on anyways because the idea of Batman working with ANYONE, least of all a kid, that just had to be shared) and those who were convinced it was true and Bats had finally gone batty. Flash reluctantly belonged to the second. It wasn’t because he actually trusted the people who had “first hand accounts” or because of the pictures that enthusiasts were waving around with gusto. He had seen pictures of Big foot that were more convincing. No, he believed there might just be something to the story because no one, in his right mind or otherwise, would EVER dream up this crazy of an idea in their own heads. He was the only one he knew who even dared make fun of the big, scary brooder, and he wasn’t sure even he would dare something this extravagant if he had the imagination for it. 

HE wasn’t sure how he felt about it. The carefree part of him that was all hyper fun and energy was just like” “aw, the bat got a kid! That’s so cute! Maybe he’ll finally learn to live a little! I wanna meet him. Any kid that can put up with mister big and scary is awesome. He’s got to be.”

Meanwhile, the other part of him, the scared, scarred part that he mostly brushed over was a bit freaked out because… Bats was… almost like a dad now. And that, that was scary. Bats was scary enough as he was. The flash would d have liked to say he trusted him, and in a way he did but… he wasn’t sure. He didn’t trust dads. All he knew was that if batman did anything to hurt the kid, he’d have to answer to the flash. No one had seen it yet, but the flash, he could be pretty scary when provoked. Of course, all this was going on under the surface. Flash was not really consciously aware of it he was just… apprehensive.

Of course, he was also worried about the kid. Because, well, working as a vigilante was not exactly normal childhood behavior. Especially in GOTHAM of all places. But he was not as apprehensive about that as most of the JLA, not as apprehensive as most would expect him to be. After all, what did he know about a “Normal childhood”? he wouldn’t judge. As long as the kid was happy, as long as Bats did nothing to hurt him (And he knew that Batman wouldn’t, he KNEW that, but if he did…. ) then it was fine by the Flash. It was actually kind of cool that he could do this at such a young age, I mean, that must take a lot of skill, and if he had impressed Batman of all people enough to let him be his partner, he must have a LOT of skill. And it would be nice to finally not be the youngest super hero out there. Finally be able to call some young upstart kid, or even squirt and look at the less than pleased look on his face.

OF course, it would probably turn out that the gossips were exaggerating and the “kid” would turn out to be no younger than the flash. But that would be fun too. They could be friends, co-annoyers of the batman.

(Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Any kid Batman would agree to work with would probably end up being a real downer.)  But, the annoying thing was that Flash had no idea what was going on with this kid thing. he had no idea what the kid was like, if he was happy, how batman was treating him. He was getting really curious.

Of course, thoughts of Batman’s kid partner were pretty well kicked out of his head by a crisis, and then there were a bunch of innocent bystanders he had to rescue, and then he realized that he had completely forgotten about a date he was supposed to have, and spent, like the next hour beating himself up because he was a horrible mean guy for for standing her up. And then he had a bunch of really pressing work stuff to do. And then he remembered his college paper, which he would have totally gotten done on time if it weren’t for that he accidentally started typing too fast and broke his keyboard, which was on his laptop it wasn’t as simple as just getting a new one, because he had pretty much just broken his entire computer what with the mini electric fire he had generated. Joy. 

Anyway, he had managed to finish the paper by writing it by hand, (he was careful not to set the paper on fire) he had already figured out what he was going to write so it only took about ten minutes to write the whole twenty pages. He then ran to class and got there only a few minutes late. The professor was a bit surprised he’d written the thing by hand, but he had told him this big long explanation about how he liked to write his papers by hand because it gave him inspiration and a deeper understanding of the subject and stuff. The professor bought it. He was in to deep, feeling rather than practicality based stuff like that, Wally sometimes thought he would make a good english professor, rather than Biochem (Not that he wasn’t a great biochem professor, he was awesome, Wally loved him). Now he just hoped that the guy wouldn’t mark him down for his terrible handwriting (and the fact that it was written in a bunch of different colored ink because the pens kept breaking and he had to get new ones. Eh, he’d probably find some meaning behind the color changes and like the paper better for it.)  After classes, Wally wen home to relax and eat (He was really hungry) and watch television. He, being the good super hero and genius he was, chose, instead of watching lame, brain killing (awesome) children’s cartoons, he turned on the news.

And Lois Lane (Since when was she in Central news? Or was she a national news broadcaster now? Wow if she left Metropolis Superman was going to cry himself silly. He’d probably go to his little fortress of solitude for a while. Maybe Flash would comfort him a bit. It was really nice how super speed meant that his mind could randomly go on bunny trails like this without missing anything.) Anyway, Lois lane was talking about the rumors that Batman was now working with a child vigilante. She seemed far from approving, though less than certain of the factuality of the idea. (Still, if Lois even considered writing about it, it was probably true, even if she herself was in denial.) Words like “irresponsible” and “Child endangerment” may have been thrown around.

Wally blinked. He had completely forgotten about Batman’s mysterious partner. In a flash (he he) he jumped up and sped toward gotham. It was a split second decision, it was a stupid decision, but sue him. He was impulsive. He reached the city in a matter of minutes (it would have been seconds if he hadn’t stopped to rescue a bunch of people in a car crash and then save a family from a fire in the middle of nowhere. And then he backtracked that made him hungry and the nowhere that the burning house had been in had been closer to civilization in the central direction than towards Gotham and… you get the picture.

Still, he got to gotham and the sun still hadn’t set. So he had to wait.

He didn’t much like waiting. But this time it was kind of a good thing because he could actually plan for once. For one thing, Batman was going to be REALLY mad that he just barged into his city. He should probably try to avoid him. Batman wouldn’t actually hurt him, (and it was a little twisted and a little awesome how that still blew his mind) but the Flash wasn’t really in the mood to get a scaring of his life right now. So he figured he needed to guess where Batman would be. Where the crime was, obviously, but being batman, he couldn’t just go running around his city at the speed of sound looking for criminals the way Flash did. And being batman, he wouldn’t just swing around randomly with an eye out for crime either. He would have a method, and it would be a good one. So, at this point the best idea would be to find a hiding place on Batman’s rout and hide, hoping for the best. Yes, find a place and hide, and wait. He could handle that. No matter that the world moved crazy slow for him, he could handle waiting a bit. Why hadn’t he brought a book? It really would be nice if he could manage to think ahead once in a while. It really wasn’t that much to ask. A book would be so nice. Ooh, or an audiobook that ran at super speed. Yeah, that would be really nice. He should make one or something. He wasn’t sure how he’d do that but there was probably a way. He could ask Batman but he’d probably think it was too juvenile. Any way, he had to figure out where he was most likely to see batman and his partner, and not be seen.

It took quite a bit of digging in his (rather limited) knowledge of gotham crime, and a lot of logical extrapolation and, honestly, guesswork, but after a few hours of running around gotham (covertly) and scouting out the landscape, he had a rout figured out that he was really quite proud of. So he ran along the route a couple times to double check his accuracy, then looked for a hiding place. He found one that was perfect close to his guess as to Batman’s starting place. That was definitely a plus. Yeah. He could totally wait. It wasn’t that hard. How did Batman do it anyway.

Okay, that was stupid. Batman didn’t have super speed . Wally was pretty certain that he was way more patient than batman. Hah. Take that. But, like he said, he was patient. He could do it.

For about fifteen minutes. Which really, that was pretty good.   But he had to MOVE. 

He shifted and vibrated a bit and tried to think of something to think about. He thought about the molecular structures of a bunch of things in his case he had recently. That blood… there was something off about it. he should have gotten a sample. Were they sure it was human blood? That plastic they’d gotten had come from a farm, used to hold animal feed. The more he thought about it the more it seemed like the whole thing had been a set up. Maybe…

But that could wait because… There was the kid.

He was dressed in REALLY bright colors, like brighter than the flash costume bright. It also had a lot of black, but still, Wally could hardly believe that mr. dark and broody would willingly have anything that cheerful within a hundred yards of him.   And, wow. The kid was tiny. Really tiny. It was kind freaking him out. He would have thought the kid was a pretender who heard rumors of batman getting a kid to work with him and childishly decided to become a superhero too, except… The kid was amazing.

Out in the ally a gang had been harassing a girl and it had started to look ugly, only this was gotham, and everything had been silent. The gang just walked up to the girl guns out and she knew what they wanted, and that screaming wouldn’t help anything. So she had been sort of resigned and the Flash hadn’t even noticed. He hated that he hadn't noticed. He wasn’t used to this shadowy, no screaming business. But the kid had just dropped down in his bright red and yellow and green and disarmed the gang in a series of flips and jumps and kicks which would be almost impossible for most people to follow. It was really pretty amazing.

When the gang was subdued ( a whole gang subdued by one tiny kid) the kid turned turned to Wally’s hiding place and and grinned.

“Hey Flash,” he said “You can come out. The big bad bat’s off somewhere doing something incredibly dangerous that I’m not aloud to help him with.” 

Flash jumped. How had the kid seen him? But he was caught so it didn’t matter. Now he would actually get to meet the kid. He sped out of hiding, glad to be finally do something.

“Wow,” the kid said, his voice filled with awe, “You’re the Flash.”  
“Yep,” the flash said. man was this kid cute.

“I mean, I knew you were there, but. Wow. You’re the Flash, and you’re here, that SO AMAZING!” The kid continued all excitement and hero worship. The Flash laughed. This was one weird kid. One moment he was beating up thugs and saving a woman from the sort of crime that Flash didn’t think normal kids should even know about, and the next he was fanboying over the Flash just like any other kid his age would. 

“So, did you see how I saved that lady? It was cool, huh!” He said, in the same way that other kids might say “I run fast too, I won a trophy at my school, wanna see?”.

“Yeah, that was really something kid. So, what’s you’re name. I don’t want to have to call you kid all the time.” Flash said, wondering what would have happened if the kid had come just a few minutes too late, what he would have seen. He really hadn’t fully understood what the child endangerment aspect of all this would mean until he’d had it displayed right in front of him like that. It wasn’t so much what might happen to the kid. He obviously had skills, and though he was at risk just as any of them were, the way Flash saw it he deserved to take the risk just as well as anyone else. But the trouble was that in this business, especially in Gotham, he was going to see things that no kid should have to see. And the kid couldn’t make an informed decision about that risk, because the whole point was that he shouldn’t know about that stuff. Sure, when it came to underage heroes in general, Flash couldn’t be one to talk. He started had started out when he was under the age of eighteen, and he was still technically a teenager, but that didn’t mean that he could be okay with this kid being in this mess. He looked about seven. Still, though. Flash didn’t understand the situation. He couldn’t just say the kid couldn’t be a hero without any other knowledge. But he was GOING t figure it out. He was, at least fairly certain that Batman wasn’t hurting him. The casual, fond and and rather teasing and annoyed way in which he had mentioned Batman earlier convinced him of that. Or at least he tried to tell himself that. It was hard to get rid of that nagging, distrusting feeling. It annoyed him that he couldn’t get away from it, even when it came to obviously good people, like Batman. Or sort of obviously good, if you knew him. 

“Oh,” Robin was saying in normal person time, in a rather abashed way. He held out his hand for Flash to shake. “Hi, I’m Robin. World’s first child hero, well, youngest child hero. I’m not sure the exact ages some of the other heroes started out at.”

When he said that he seemed to be sizing up the flash in a way that made him wonder if he knew. 

Flash grinned, “Nice to meet you, Robin,” He said, shaking the hand.

“Well, Robin said,” Not at all like he was happy about it, “I think I have to go now. People to save, rapings to stop, you know how it is. Unless,” And then his face brightened as if he had come to a decision and liked it, “You want to patrol with me? Batman won’t even know.”  “Robin, if you think Batman won’t know something you don’t know him very well.”

Robin shrugged. “I’m a positive thinker, so what do you say?”  Flash considered. He really wanted to get to know Batman’s kid. He also really didn’t want to get in trouble with batman. Oh well, what was getting scared half to death for a good cause?

“Sure thing kid,” Flash said. without missing a beat.

Robin gave him a rather weak glare. “I thought I told you my name so that you didn’t call me kid,” he said.

Flash laughed, “I like variety.”

Robin sighed. “Right then,” he said, “Try to keep up, fastest man alive.” Then he flipped up onto a nearby building without even the use of his grapple and ran off, flipping onto a higher building with the aid of nothing but a drain pipe. Wally watched after him in awe for a full fifteen seconds, then he was off trying to track the bright yellow and black blur as it flew and twisted in a way that really did remind him of the boy’s namesake. Then, after an extra showy move Robin cackled, a high and piercing sound that seemed to come from all directions at once, and was at once terrifying and light heartedly childish. And the Flash knew, that whatever else might happen and whatever else he might learn, he liked the Bat’s knew kid. The kid would need a few influences that weren’t all dark and brooding. Flash was quite willing to be that, and if batman wasn’t thrilled with the idea, then, well, Batman would have to deal.


End file.
